|
 Folk
Ways
By
B.A. Nilsson
Woody
Guthrie
My
Dusty Road (Rounder)
Every now and then, something turns up unexpectedly. Caravaggio’s
The Taking of the Christ was unearthed, but I still
await a complete print of Orson Welles’ The Magnificent
Ambersons. Meanwhile, a stash of Woody Guthrie recordings
was discovered in a Brooklyn storage bin, part of the inventory
of Stinson-label records that fell into limbo following a
tangled series of bankruptcies and family disputes.
It’s too fascinating a story to recount here, and Ed Cray
and Bill Nowlin have a detailed essay in the booklet accompanying
the four-CD set, My Dusty Road, that reissues 54 of
these very significant recordings.
One of the unfortunate characteristics of the Guthrie legacy
is that his recordings were produced fast and cheap, and many
of them, drawn from dubs of dubs, sound like crap. Some of
the songs from these sessions went to original co-producer
Moe Asch’s Folkways label, which had a way of making everything
sound terrible, and are now available through the Smithsonian-Folkways
label. More on that in a moment.
Here, on the other hand, is a set taken directly from metal
masters that sat virtually unmolested since they were recorded
in April 1944. The sound isn’t audiophile-quality clean, but
restoration engineer Doug Pomeroy (responsible for sparkling
projects for Mosaic Records and for Bluebird’s “Secret History
of Rock and Roll” series) has brought out a tonal depth, including
an impressive range of high-frequency material, that you wouldn’t
associate with Woody’s recordings.
Guthrie was a Merchant Marine on shore leave during the week
in April 1944 when he laid down an astonishing 250 tracks,
many of them with Cisco Houston and Sonny Terry. Over 60 of
those sides got the quality-rerelease treatment in a 1999
Smithsonian-Folkways four-CD set that also included a number
of other Guthrie recordings from the period. The songs sound
far better than any of the earlier Folkways LPs, but still
bear the scars of overplayed masters.
Those April 1944 sessions present Woody at the peak of his
writing and performing career. Despite the speed with which
these recordings were made, they are the accomplished work
of a seasoned artist. So the new Rounder set becomes a very
important component of the Guthrie canon, not only illustrating
his artistry but also freezing a moment in time when these
songs, many of them still familiar, were still evolving.
Disc One lives up to its moniker of “Woody’s Greatest Hits,”
with versions of “This Land Is Your Land,” “Pretty Boy Floyd,”
two takes of “Going Down the Road” and the previously unreleased
“Bad Repetation” [sic] among the offerings. The “Woody’s Roots”
disc includes traditional songs like “Stackolee,” “Chisholm
Trail,” “John Henry” and Guthrie’s reworkings of “Stewball,”
“Buffalo Skinners” and more.
Some of the songs on Disc Three, “Woody the Agitator,” were
inspired by the then-current war (“Tear the Fascists Down,”
“When the Yanks Go Marching In”) but they’re mixed with classic
union songs and a two-part tribute to Harriet Tubman. The
final CD presents 15 recordings in which Guthrie is joined
by Houston and Terry, including three previously unreleased
sides (“Guitar Rag,” “Brown’s Ferry Blues” and “Sonny’s Flight.”)
It’s an intense listening experience, especially when you
augment it with a careful reading of the detailed program
notes. Taken thus, the brief playing time of each CD doesn’t
seem like a shortfall, although I’d like to know the fate
of the Stinson recordings that didn’t make it into this set.
 Michael
Hurley
Ida
Con Snock (Gnomonsong)
Michael Hurley’s latest finds him paired with Ida. A good
match: The latter, erstwhile slowcore practitioners, are more
comfortably part of the cerebral-folk and alt-psych-Americana
scene, who owe some of the elusiveness of their genre monikers
to Hurley and his free-ranging ways. A relaxed set recorded
in Woodstock and Brooklyn, the disc’s dozen songs mix covers
with Hurley originals, most potently a couple from his back
catalog. “Wildegeeses” is stirring from the first breathy
draw of the bow across Jean Cook’s violin. Hypnotic and mysterious,
it is gently foreboding in an utterly singular manner, adding
a layer of gravity only hinted at when it first appeared on
Weatherhole a decade ago. “Hog of the Forsaken” drills
a hole through time, leaving you unsure of what time, day,
or even year it is at the end of its four-and-a-half minutes.
Adding to the good-natured feeling that permeates these ensemble
sessions are an assortment of songs from songbooks brimming
with everything from the British Isles (a medley of “Loch
Lomond” and “Molly Malone”) to novelty (“Ragg Mopp”), to ’50s
rockers (Fats Domino’s “Valley of Tears”) and teen pop (“Going
Steady”). As has been the case for pretty much the entirety
of his 45-year career, Hurley’s music refuses to to be constrained
by stylistics of marketing directives. Garage bands, front-porch
strummers, solitary fishermen, bouncing children: Everybody
gather ’round!
—David
Greenberger
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